Since 1985, in various formats, SLANT -- an independent voice based in Richmond's Fan District -- has offered its readers original commentary on politics and popular culture, including cartoons and selected sundries. Warning: Sometimes that means satirical content. All rights are reserved.

Monday, June 29, 2015

Addicted to Choice

Note: A version of this piece was published by STYLE Weekly in 2004.

John Lennon illustration by Mike Lormand (1984)

"Whatever gets you through the night 'salright, 'salrightIt's your money or life 'salright, 'salright” -- John Lennon

Obsessions,
compulsions and addictions have always been in play. Now we see a
somewhat new twist in driven behavior: In a time of plenty, many
Americans seem to have become addicted to the act of choosing between
this and that. This group has unwittingly developed what amounts to a
jones for choosing from a smorgasbord of options.

Yet,
as with any buzz, when it subsides the anxious feelings it allayed
return with a vengeance. Thus, choice addicts find themselves living in a
continuous loop of making choices in order to cope with their habit.
This is beyond consuming, it's about choosing.

Of
course Madison Avenue, the great facilitator of this shop-’til-you-drop
scenario, has long depicted “choice” as utter bliss: Come and get 'em! These limited-edition widgets come in five, I say five, designer colors.

Choice
has also been a hot political buzzword for some time. To a person
wanting to express a belief that a woman is absolutely entitled to opt
for an abortion, choice is a useful word for a slogan. It implies that
ending the pregnancy is a matter of a person having dominion over her
own body, rather than submitting to an authority claiming to represent
society’s collective will. Of course, those calling for “choice” in this
case see the individual’s right to choose an abortion as trumping
whatever damage, if any, might be done to society by the abortion.

The
notion that it should be fine for any citizen to pull his tax money out
of the funding of public education, in order to finance sending his own
child to private school, has been called “choice” by its advocates.
While this argument appears to be resting on a convenient logic, it
ignores the long-held American tenet that everyone in the community has a
stake in public education, regardless of how many children they have.

In
both cases, the sloganeers show a telling awareness of the lure the
word “choice” has today. Perhaps this is due to some new collective
sense of powerlessness in the air. Or maybe the scam aspect of selling
folks their own freedom is as old as dirt.

In
“One-Dimensional Man,” German-born philosopher Herbert Marcuse
(1898-1979) warned us in the 1960s about illusions of freedom:

Free
choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify
freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life
of toil and fear.

Marcuse’s keen eye saw the
counterfeit aspect of the
processed brand of freedom wielders of easy credit felt, even then, as
they exercised their prerogative to select one set of time-payment
obligations over another. Marcuse laughed at a man feeling free to choose between a new Ford or Chevrolet, then being chained to years of monthly payments. But Marcuse’s hard-nosed take on
what he saw as controls over modern society is out of style today.
Still, his view of how language is predictably used by a few of us to
manipulate the rest of us remains as valuable as ever. Propaganda works
better than ever.

OK, so
tricky lingo has long been used to shape perception. However, as a true
believer in the unfettered streaming marketplace of ideas, I expect
tortured language and agenda-driven slogans to come and go. My point is
that the act of choosing should not be so highly valued that it comes at
the expense of appreciating what happens after the choice is made.

Some
folks put a lot of store in choosing the perfect mate. They shop and
they shop. But from what I’ve seen, it's what couples do after their choice/commitment that has more to do with the success
of the relationship than the perfection of the choice, itself. Of course, some just keep
shopping, vows or not. They can’t stop shopping and choosing.

Can
constantly switching TV channels for hours be a more satisfying
experience than watching one interesting program? Well, the answer
probably depends on whether you value what comes after the choice. After
all, in order to be able to surf 200 channels, as opposed to only 50 or
100, customers gladly pay extra, although many of them never watch any
program in its entirety.

Much of television’s most
popular programming feeds its audience a steady flow of information
about people who act as if they have genuine clout -- rich
celebrities who cavort about with enough bread to buy anything. Then,
quite conveniently, every few minutes, commercials interrupt the program
to offer the viewer/schlemiel a chance to unjitter their jones by calling a phone
number, or getting online.

Anytime
your options are limited to what’s on a menu that was put together by someone
else, by choosing from that prepared list you are surrendering some
control to the list-maker.

And, the mountain of
disposable schmidgets grows, evermore, as choice addicts cast off
yesterday’s tarnished urge, to grab after today's sparkling urge ... just
to get through the night.